


Forward And Back (And Leave It There)

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 02:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Travelling through time was a complete accident. So was passing on the idea to someone much more dangerous.





	Forward And Back (And Leave It There)

**Author's Note:**

> Let's just pretend that there was a much bigger gap between the two time periods and the founders haven't even heard of modern technology.

 

Madara squinted his eyes and leaned closed, finger poised at the ready. A quiet voice told him it was a bad idea but there was little that could stop a curious Uchiha and so Madara felt no shame for ignoring the idiot behind him and poking the object which held his fascination. He regretted doing so immediately when he felt the tip of his finger come in to contact with something incredibly hot. Only then did his brain catch up with what he was seeing and rationalize it; whatever advanced jutsu they were using had contained fire itself in to this pale orb so of _course_ it would burn.

“Please stop poking at my lightbulbs,” the same voice asked him tiredly. Madara turned to glare over one shoulder.

“Tell me what jutsu does this,” he demanded.

“It’s not a jutsu, it’s electricity.”

“Brother’s been using that word a lot lately,” Hashirama piped up from where he was excitedly inspecting a funny looking stove across the room. “Is that what it does? And this, does this use elek-i-ticity too?”

Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, their accidental host sighed. “Yes.”

“Madara, do you think elek-i-ticity is why we time traveled?”

“Of course not! Obviously it was your insane brother’s fault! Who knows what kind of madness he’s messed around with this time? If he can raise the dead then I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to have been the one behind all of this kerfuffle.”

Still rubbing his nose, although now more slightly more vigor, their host grit his teeth. “I’ve already told you, the time travel was an _accident_. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of my Mangekyo–”

“And that’s another thing! How _dare_ you! What member of my clan did you steal that from? Don’t look at me like that, young man, it’s obvious just by looking at you that you aren’t an Uchiha. My clan’s bloodlines run strong.”

“Is he always like this, Shodaime-sama?” When Madara squawked in offense the young man turned back to him with a roll of his one visible eye. “I didn’t steal the eye; it was a gift from a friend. And I’m still trying to get the hang of everything – by myself, since no one in your oh-so-auspicious clan is willing to help me learn.” Despite the youth of his body there was an exhaustion in his voice that spoke of more years of pain than he should have experienced. It made Madara wonder if he’d been born with that gray hair or if stress had drained all the color away as parents the world over claimed.

There was something about that exhaustion which gave him pause. Years ago, when he and Hashirama were just young kids dreaming beside a lazy river, the first concept of their dreams for peace had been in honor of their fallen siblings. Together they had dreamed of a place where children would be safe and the adults would stop asking the younger generations to fight their battles for them.

How old, he wondered, had this child been when he saw his first battlefield? At present he could hardly be more than mid-adolescence and yet already the light in his eye was dim.

Madara crossed his arms and looked away with a stubborn expression on his face.

“I still say Tobirama must have had something to do with this,” he insisted. “This isn’t anything I’ve ever heard of the Sharingan being able to accomplish.”

“Cold! Cold!” Hashirama’s voice drew both of their attentions over to where he’d opened the top door of what looked like an upright storage chest only to find the inside coated in ice. Their host dropped his face in to one palm and shook his head.

Unable to resist, Madara sidled across the room to help his old friend inspect the latest marvel. The future was full of such amazing things. Back in his own time he’d heard of the daimyo’s latest expensive luxury purchase called an icebox and he wondered how similar it was to the small frozen cupboard he was shoving his face in to at the moment. Several frozen fish stared back at him from between brightly colored boxes labelled with food items he’d never heard of before. What on earth was a pudding pop?

When Hashirama shoved him out of the way to make a closer inspection for himself, Madara opened the lower door of this strange cupboard. Although it was larger, the lower portion was noticeably less cold. Nothing inside was frozen but rather kept at a delightfully chill temperature that one might expect to find in the evenings of late autumn. Fascinated, he rummaged around and breathed a sigh of relief that he recognized at least most of the foods inside this area. He knew the fruits and the vegetables, the milk and the butter, and although he definitely recognized the teriyaki chicken cutlets near the bottom, he couldn’t say what that thin clear sheet wrapped around the top was. What was the point of cooking the chicken if it wasn’t going to be eaten?

“This is amazing,” he heard Hashirama mutter from above him. Madara was inclined to agree.

“Can you guys close the fridge please? You’ll let all the food spoil and it wastes power to leave the doors open like that, you know? Well, actually, I guess you don’t know.”

“Power?” Madara frowned in confusion.

“Electricity.”

“Why did you call it power if it is called…that?” He certainly wasn’t going to make a fool of himself as Hashirama kept doing by taking a chance on mispronouncing it.

“It means the same thing. Just a slang word. Could you close the door?”

With a shrug Madara stood up and deigned to do so. Hashirama popped the top door shut on the ice cupboard but as soon as he’d let go of that he was back over at the fancy looking stove, poking at buttons.

“Hey! Hey Madara! Let’s light this! Do you think the fire goes in here?”

“Don’t!” The adolescent came flying across the room and shoved himself in between the stove and his two visitors. “It doesn’t need fire. Just – please go sit down in the living room before I have a heart attack or something.”

“My apologies if we’ve touched something we shouldn’t,” Hashirama told him. Instead of answering, the youth only narrowed his eyes and insistently pointed the way to the living room.

Within five minutes it became obvious that it was just as dangerous for them to be in here as both Madara and Hashirama attempted to figure out how the ‘tiny people’ had gotten trapped inside the wooden box against one wall.

“It’s just my television,” their host moaned in despair. He claimed it would take much too long to explain to them how the device worked but without a satisfactory explanation Madara was still much too curious to back off. He continued to bend left and right in an effort to peer at all sides of the box so he could find the hole where the little people entered through. Maybe a door or some kind? There were a lot of weird ropes – apparently called wires although it didn’t look like any wire he’d ever seen – but he didn’t see anything that could be considered an entrance. How the people got shrunk was more important anyway. What a jutsu that would be! Defeating his enemies would be so much easier if he could make them pocket sized and hold them down with the flat of one palm.

“How are these bound?” Hashirama asked from where he now stood next to a squat wooden bookcase. “I can’t even see the stitching.”

“Please put those down, Shodaime-sama!”

“But they’re so pretty! Such a beautiful orange color and the women on the front look very happy.”

“Gah!”

Flushed red from hairline to the top of his half-mask, the adolescent lunged across the room to extract his seemingly precious tome from Hashirama’s grasp. They must have been worth quite a lot if he was unwilling to let someone as auspicious as the God of Shinobi handle them. With a sheepish expression, Hashirama apologized for touching something of such value, slipping both hands behind his back and wandering away to inspect the pictures hung upon the wall.

Abandoning the ‘television’ for a moment, Madara joined the idiot’s inspection. Whoever painted these photographs was a master artist, able to create incredible detail in their work – it was as though they had simply captured a moment in time and hung it upon the wall somehow! The figures depicted in the painting appeared to be staring straight out of the image in to his own eyes. Most of them were smiling but for the young boy to one side who resembled a younger version of their host; he was scowling and turning his head to glare at another young boy on the other side of the painting.

“My word,” Hashirama murmured under his breath. One of his hands came up to stroke the glass covering which protected the amazing art. Probably it was meant to guard it from people like him who failed to smother their urge to fondle things which didn’t belong to them. Entirely ignoring the fact that he also fell in to that category of person at the moment, Madara returned to his perusal of this ‘television’ object, now looking for any seals which might have been powering it.

From the corner of one eye he could see their host bring his hands together and forming seals. Madara’s body tensed automatically until he recognized the summoning jutsu and he relaxed again when the boy placed his hand on the floor and a small pug appeared in a puff of smoke wearing a cute little vest.

“What’s up boss?”

“Can you just…just watch them for a minute, okay? Make sure they don’t break anything or – or leave, kami forbid.”

“Sure thing.” The puff hopped up on to a the arm of a dilapidated looking couch and sat at attention for all of three seconds before his back leg came up to scratch his ear.

With a shake of his head their host popped back in to the kitchen area, where he could be heard rummaging through doors and cupboards. Quiet grumbling drifted out in to the living room as he muttered to himself under his breath.

Madara had only just given up on locating any seals on the surface of the ‘television’ and plopped down in front of it to attempt communication with the people trapped inside when their host came back. He was holding what looked like a small pellet in his hand, dark and round, but before either of them had a chance to ask about it he popped it in to his mouth and crunched down.

“Is that a good idea, boss?” the pug asked gruffly. “Your chakra levels have been wacky enough lately without you taking boosters every time you get a little tired.”

“Trust me, it’s necessary this time. I promise when it happens next I’ll just sleep it off, alright? But I need to replenish my chakra stores if I’m going to get these two back to where they belong; they can’t stay here!”

“Alright, alright.”

“Oh, we can’t stay?” Hashirama turned away from his perusal of more amazing portraits. “I had hoped to have a look around the village that we built.”

The boy gave him a flat look. “It’s very village-like,” he said shortly. Hashirama wilted.

“Oh. Well, ah, thank you. I suppose that covers that.”

“Right. Were either of you doing anything of note just before you were pulling forward in time?”

“Nothing more out of the ordinary than me showing this oaf his own ass,” Madara replied, a suspicious grimace falling over his features as his mind went back to the battle they had been pulled out of. “But kami only knows what that fool Tobirama was up to. I’ve no doubt that whatever dangerous idiocy he was up to this time could have affected us as far away as the other side of the battlefield.”

Groaning, the host rubbed at the bridge of his nose as he had been doing before. “How many times–? It was my–! Never mind. Whatever. Can you both just stand together in the middle of the room so I can try to replicate what _I_ was doing? Hopefully this should send you back to whenever it is that you came from.”

Like the giant puppy he was, Hashirama hopped to immediately. Madara followed with a heavy dose of reluctance and much less speed. Just because they were friends once didn’t mean he had to be excited to stand next to the man. Once they were both standing together in the center of the room as they’d been asked to their host lifted his slanted headband to reveal a transplanted Sharingan. With a spark of chakra Madara activated his own, memorizing the sight before him and recording the proceedings for later consideration. If one of his own clan members could unlock similar abilities it would be his duty to care for their safety as they learned how to wield them; any information at all would be helpful and a practical demonstration even more so.

The boy’s eye melted in to Mangekyo formation, whereupon its ceased spinning as all did when they reached that stage, and he brought his hands together in an ancient seal designed to gather chakra in preparation for a big release.

“Kamui!”

The world melted. It was the only way Madara could think of to describe it. Or perhaps he might have said that reality itself was reduced to the eye of a hurricane. Either way, the room around them disappeared in a spiral of black and Hashirama’s fingers clutched at the sleeve of Madara’s robes, keeping a good grip on him in case they were somehow separated in this emptiness between worlds. Stupid, really, to worry for someone he should have seen as his enemy. For a moment there was a sensation – almost an instinctual feeling – as though they were somewhere _other_ and Madara had the fleeting thought that the two most powerful men to have ever existed had put their full trust in the hands of a boy whose name they never even bothered to learn.

Yet the moment passed quickly and they traveled seamlessly from one reality to the next, appearing back in a half decimated forest clearing as though they’d never left. The two men looked at each other in silence before turning to watch the fighting going on around them, wondering if anyone had even noticed their little trip. It became obvious that at least some people had when they noticed the relieved looks both of them were receiving. Their clan mates were happy to see them back after disappearing so suddenly, though unwilling to disengage from defending themselves just to come over and say so.

Both of their brothers, on the other hand, had no problem rushing over with matching expressions of suspicion. Madara allowed Izuna to lay a hand on his arm for a moment in greeting before he peeled back his lips and snarled at Tobirama, now standing protectively in front of his own older brother like some rabid guard dog.

“ _You_!”

Tobirama narrowed his eyes cocked his head to one side at Madara’s angry shout.

“Can I help you, Uchiha?” he asked.

“I still say this was all your fault somehow! What have you done? What unholy jutsu were you messing with now that sent us through _time itself_?”

“Sent you through time?” Put off balance by such an unexpected answer, he turned his head to stare his sibling down with a look of vicious intensity. “What is he talking about? Give me _details_.”

Madara scowled at him and crossed his arms petulantly. “Oh as if you don’t know! Whatever it was that you did sent us in to the future – which, by the way, is incredibly stupid and confusing. Cupboards full of ice and tiny people trapped in boxes and fire contained in tiny glass orbs. And it’s all your fault!”

“Time travel. Hmm.”

“See? Brother didn’t have anything to do with it,” Hashirama chipped in. “Just as that boy said. It was an accident!

“Indeed, time travel is not something that I had previously considered as an area of experimentation. What a fascinating idea. To know that such a thing is possible – I know just where to begin my research!” He seemed to have already forgotten about the bloody sword still held fast in one hand, the other one already curling as though aching for a pen to fit between his fingers.

“Uh, what?” Although it was Hashirama whom he always met in battle and had gotten to know well when they were friends all those years ago, no familiarity was needed to recognize certain warning signs when it came to Tobirama. Worry settled over Madara as he noticed several of them now.

Tobirama refocused on his enemy just to grace him with a dangerous smile. “I must thank you, Uchiha, though it pains me a little to do so. What a fascinating concept you’ve given me. Time travel. Excellent. And it’s all thanks to you.” With that he turned and marched away, either forgetting they were still technically in the middle of battle or dismissing it as unimportant in the face of something more interesting.

“No! Senju get back here! I said _no_! Are you listening to me!?”

Once his hair had settled in the wake of a harried looking Madara rushing past him, Izuna following after, Hashirama stared blankly in to space for a while, simply allowing his mind a moment to process everything that had happened in such a short amount of time. Their trip to the future had only lasted a little over an hour yet he felt as though his entire perception of life had been altered. Although they hadn’t been able to explore or ask questions, they had still learned a few invaluable secrets which he knew he would keep close to his heart for the rest of his life.

His village, his precious lifelong dream, would someday become a true reality. Not only that but it would thrive and prosper many years after he was gone. Even long in to the future the village he built would stand as a beacon of safety and community, a place for those of different clans to live together in peace with each other. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes, feeling as though he’d been granted a boon by the gods themselves; surely no man but him could have such certainty in their own dreams.

Then he turned and hurried after the other three men, if only to prevent Madara and Izuna from following a distracted Tobirama all the back to the Senju compound.

-

(Blinking tiredly at the now-empty space in his living room, Kakashi sighed and wondered if he should report what had just happened to the Third Hokage. He wondered if there were any official records which should have warned them that this would even occur someday. Although, he reasoned, if there were then they would probably have encouraged someone more important to be present than a scrawny teenager who was too young to have been in ANBU for this many years already.

Some day when he was older Kakashi would meet a man who would call himself Uchiha Madara and threaten the shinobi system as a whole. When that day came Kakashi would be among those inclined to believe that the man might just be who he claimed to be for he would have a knowledge that others did not.

He had met Uchiha Madara, had pulled the man through time himself. Who was he to say that such a thing had not extended that monster’s life somehow? Time was something no human could control and yet the full abilities of Uchiha Madara had never been recorded. It wasn’t impossible.

For now Kakashi remained blissfully unaware of the future which awaited him. His thoughts were on the present day and how his life existed only as a future for those long gone. Deep thoughts indeed for a boy who only came home to escape a certain loud mouthed friend and would have performed a number of underhanded tasks just to get a quick nap. That was how he preferred to spend _his_ time.)


End file.
